How to live on $432 a month in America

On one hand I agree with the general premise of the article, which is that you can live a lot cheaper than you choose to. Homes in the passably-cute downtown of Massena are under $100k; you could live on $40k/yr comfortably and if you're here on HN you can probably earn at least than that with a remote job. Cutting it to $5k/yr is just trying to prove something.

The missing thing is health care. If you're young and immortal and willing to take risks, sure. This attitude won't last into middle age. My wife had cancer, and without health insurance I'd be a single parent right now. Maybe you can lean on public assistance like Medicaid (if it continues to exist), but this isn't really a scalable solution for "we can all live cheaper". It only works if enough people stay in the rat race to pay for it.

"Cheap" health insurance for a youngish small family is >$1000/mo. That really isn't optional in the US.

That's insane, my dad had cancer 3 years ago, and here in Spain we didn't even think about it (beyond of course the terrible situation). If you also want private insurance it will cost a youngish small family (like mine) 150EUR/month.